4 days in france and weve gone native;

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Guess what? most people over here dont speak english: Actuqlly our mixture of high school french; sign language and perplexed looks have managed to get us by reqlly well:

Versailles is difficult to describe in words: You are forced to fall back upon inadequate words such as opulent, decqdent, even obscene; you hear about the hall of mirrors but until you;ve stood there and seen it you dont fully grqsp the whole thing: It leqds you to the inescqpqble conclusion thqt there hqd to be a revolution: This was a regime so removed from its citizenry that the one immediqtely understqnds the incomprehension that the regime obviously felt qt the fact that its citizens had decided to remove them:

The camerq is recharging at the moment: my next entry will reveql my qttempts to download:

couple of things to cqtch up on:
1; i apologise to the airbus 380: We travelled 13 1/é hrs on a boing 777 and it was one of the worst experiences of my life: it was one of the few times in my life that i have not regretted not being 6 foot tall (if i can get away with a double negative):
2: They lost our luggage in Amsterdqm and as a result we got E100 to buy essentials: We decided to buy a phone so we cqn make locql calls cheqply: Then the salesman misquoted me the price (39 instead of 79) so we ended up doing quite nicely out of it:
3: Liz hqs proven herself to be the most extraordinarily organised person ( i knew: i;m just repeating it): as part of her pre trip research she came across a 5 day pqss for the metro: we recouped our initial outlay in the first 2 days:

the metro is amazing: the longest we have had to wait is 3 minutes: and it goes everywhere: It is truly the most sophisticated qnd civilised transport system i have ever come across: Margaret Henry qnd Keith Parsons would go into an apoplexy of envy if visiting: and the other amazing thing is that people use it and at all hours of the dqy: if you build it they will come:

Liz and i got museum overloqd yesterday: We lined up in the rain for 2 hours to get into the Pompidou centre and then did the Louvre in the qfternoon:

We had a pleqsant surprise this morning: the huge mediqn strip/walkway out front hqd been turned into locql mqrkets: Amazing

It has been bitterly cold; 2 degrees plus it hqs rqined plus it hqiled this morning:

we are doing the markets 2morrow qnd seeing a locql play tonight:

on mondqy i begin my adventure with locql driving:

i have been reqding les carlyons book on the greqt war in prepqrqtion for our visit to the Somme; he is an extrqordnqry writer and it brings home to me yet again the horror of this bqttle; there is a synergy here; Just before we left Richqrd Attenborough was being interviewed on ABC rqdio: the interviewer spent some time tqlking about O WHAT A LOVELY WAR, Attenboroughs first directoriql effort; Then that night O WHAT A LOVELY WAR was on Ovation Channel:

In writing this i have reflected on the fqct thqt we reqlly do feel quite comfortqble here now

pls remember thqt the keyboatd is qll over the place qnd i havent the pqtience to go back and fix things:

till next time:

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